A Comprehensive View on TD Prevention Practices and Reasons for not Preventing It

Abstract

Context. Technical debt (TD) prevention allows software practitioners to apply practices to avoid potential TD items in their projects. Aims. To uncover and prioritize, from the point of view of software practitioners, the practices that could be used to avoid TD items, the relations between these practices and the causes of TD, and the practice avoidance reasons (PARs) that could explain the failure to prevent TD. Method. We analyze data collected from six replications of a global industrial family of surveys on TD, totaling 653 answers. We also conducted a follow up survey to understand the importance level of analyzed data. Results. Most practitioners indicated that TD could be prevented, revealing 89 prevention practices and 23 PARs for explaining the failure to prevent TD. The paper identifies statistically significant relationships between preventive practices and certain causes of TD. Further, it prioritizes the list of practices, PARs, and relationships regarding their level of importance for TD prevention based on the opinion of software practitioners. Conclusion. This work organizes TD prevention practices and PARs in a conceptual map and the relationships between practices and causes of TD in a Sankey diagram to help the visualization of the body of knowledge reported in this study.